hEdge Media

Wilder conversations, living knowledge and paying attention to Barn Owl

I have been been quiet here of late.

Been struggling a bit.

I’m not alone I know.

Trying to ‘work things out’

To make sense of the unhinged.

Ruminating in stuck loops of thought.

Trying to find the ‘knowing’ , the logic to compute what is happening in the world around me.

While the machine of modernity grinds on.

I’ve been here before, many times.

Someone was asking me about the podcast recently.

We are currently having an extended break while plotting the next evolution in what is our 7th year.

We are figuring out how we can be most useful in these maddest of times,

What should we add into the noise, where podcasts are abundant and our energy and attention is limited.

And how to sustain both the creation of the podcast and ourselves while we’re at it.

‘Why do you have these conversations ?’ he said.

Well, when I started in 2018 it was a way for me to explore and sense-make my own curiosities and listen and learn from humans I admired.

About topics and things that I couldn’t speak about freely in my work/life.

But over the years as civilisation unravels and the constructed reality gets more extreme, more folks began to find us and seemed to appreciate the knowledge, ideas and perspectives that emerge through the episodes.

So I have began to describe our podcast and many other offerings out there as Edge Media - stories, conversations, ideas, living knowledge from the edges of our mainstream reality.

There’s a lot you can find about the creative possibilities and fertility of edges, often believed to be the most interesting, diverse and valuable places in any living system.

Dynamic edges, where perceived order meets complexity and chaos.

So I’ve been thinking about Edge Media as source of alternative knowledge, ideas and stories for times where mainstream media makes less and less sense.

And up popped these words again in my head from the wise and humble Dougald Hine

“Stop trying to make sense according to the logic of the world that is ending”

“Sometimes you are born into the ending of a world. The story you were born into doesn't have much further to run. The future no longer works. This is a thing that happens. It has happened to others before you. What moves are worth trying, in such a time? First, as far as you can, stop trying to make sense according to the logic of the world that is ending. Then start trying to make good ruins, to release materials from the structures of that ending world, materials that could be put to use in the building of worlds we can't even imagine yet.”

Dougald Hine

That invitation to ‘stop trying to make sense according to the logic of the world that is ending”

That’s the edge I’m really living and working with right now.

Painfully at times.

As I’m sure many of us are finding.

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A couple of weeks back I was preparing to go out on a Medicine Walk as part of our Into the Dark offering. My plan was to head out in the darkness before dawn on the Sunday morning.

On the Saturday afternoon before, I was up on Ghost Wood Down, 27 acres of regenerating downland on the edge of Bath that I am taking co-stewardship and guardianship of this year, and where we will be hosting a variety of offerings for this community.

I was with my friend Charlie, my fellow guardian of the land, we were walking the land at dusk down by the stream when we saw the unmistakable flight of a barn owl up on the meadow above us.

A ghost like bird that moves like a giant moth.

Such a beautiful bird to witness.

I’ve only ever seen one once before, years ago.

Charlie turned to me and tells me he spotted a barn owl by the road earlier that week as he was driving home, he pulled over, but it was already dead, he picked it up and brought it home to tend to its passing properly.

“I have wing feathers for you” he said.

The next morning I set off in the dark from my house and headed over the hills through thick silent fog.

I was walking land I know intimately but I could only see a couple of yards in front of me.

You cannot see the future a voice said, but you can see what is right in front of you.

I headed down a steep valley path to the River Avon to walk a stretch of the river that I’d never visited before.

As I crossed the river the first light of dawn opened on the dark slow flow of the waters.

I crossed a meadow and noticed in the corner of my view a lone Ash tree up towards the edge of the meadow, it seemed ancient and I was immediately drawn to it.

I changed tack and walked back up towards the tree.

As a I got closer I noticed a small skull wedged in the lower trunk. I felt welcomed there and sat for a while stroking the thick moss covering the old gnarly bark.

I shared some gratitudes and made my way back onto a path that lead me through walls of thick blackthorn and into another scrubby meadow.

As I walked into the middle of the meadow, I stopped suddenly as the white ghostly moth like shape of a barn owl appeared from the edges and began to criss cross the sky in front of me for the next 10 minutes, occasionally diving into the ground as it spotted breakfast.

It must have seen me and known that I was there, but it seemed to trust my presence.

It was an astonishing feeling to be watching this owl at daybreak.

So there I was with my third barn owl encounter in 15 hours.

What does any of this mean ? I thought.

With some contemplation my takeout has been that I need to trust in my own intuition.

My own deeper personal ways of knowing, ways that are always available to me if I pay attention and feed wisely but that I can often over-ride, especially when things get crazier in my life.

So that is an intention for this year

So thank you barn owl.

I’m very grateful to you.

Which brings me to what I’m playfully calling hEdge media.

That there is a vast web of intelligence and other knowledge that is also available to us from a wider community of life if we are prepared to open ourselves up to the invitation and practice.

Because hEdge media is alive,

It is emergent,

It is co-created between living things,

Humans and more than humans

Through entanglement, encounter and relationship.

It’s not passive.

It’s not delivered to you.

You can’t scroll it.

But through intentionality, open-ness, active participation.

You can receive.

When we allow ourselves to trust in exploration, experimentation and imagination.

Because what if it’s there in the hEdges, that we might begin to sense-make new logics.

Logics that can help us navigate these times in ways that make sense in our own bodies.

What new knowledge and possibility might emerge through an entanglement of practice, connection, care and mystery when we commune regularly with others, human and more than human ?

Because as Nora Bateson puts it..

“There will be no community without first communing”

So here’s to hEdge Media, wild conversations and strange encounters

And the possibilities of communing in crews.

Co-creating living knowledge that we can feel and trust in our own bodies.

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If any of this speaks to you I’d love to hear from you.

And if you’re interested in exploring the edges and hedges with me and other fellow humans we have three weekends now booking in April, June and September for our Community Solo at Ghost Wood Down, Nr Bath.

A weekend on the land in community, exploring our connections with more-than-human nature, fire circles for deeper listening and sharing stories and a guided overnight nature solo.

A beautiful opportunity for tuning into hEdge media, who knows what you might receive.